Sports personality

Hi all, Can anyone explain to a simple soul as I, how the powers that be at the good ol' BBC knew to have the award ready to present to Andy Murray who was in Miami? whilst everyone else was in Leeds.

Okay, he might have been an odds on favourite, (not in my book) but just imagine how much egg on faces had the public voted otherwise, which is how it is supposed to work. It looks to me very much like the Strictly Come Dancing charade (No, I don't watch it) where they pretend the Sunday show is live & have the audience change places & the "stars" change their attire, whilst talking about "last nights show" blah blah blah. What a sham. Or am I seriously missing summat!!!

I agree with you Star Gaze. As far as tennis goes he's a good player. But he'll never be first in the queue to be a commentator or generic show host that many others get to look forward too when they retire!

Not remotely interested in who won Sports personality as I don't care but I expect they had all the candidates lined up for a possible presentation wherever they were. I do watch Strictly and am keen that Susannah gets to the final as she does have personality which she puts in to every dance as opposed to Sophie whose performances seem very reserved - except for her Charleston early on - and Nathalie who seems cold and clinical.

I'd like to see Abby win as she has made excellent progress from the first show and has turned out to be a very talented dancer and equal to every challenge.

I'd also like a revamp of Strictly itself as it's current format is getting ever more farcical and the direction of the camera work is appalling and the fancy new lighting effects often mask the dancing even when they do focus on it. There are an awful lot of keen social and amateur dancers like OH and me out there who want to see the dancing from footwork to hold and topline and not how clever the techies are.

I want Abby to win too, as you say she has improved over the weeks Natalie, I think has done dancing in the past, so thats a bit unfair, Sorry to say this but I really don't want Susanna to win, I wanted her to go weeks ago. Also agree with you about seeing footwork etc. Sometimes when the judges say about mistakes etc, I rewind and watch again, but more often than not you don't see it as the camera haven't caught that part. Oh well we shall find out at the weekend

I am a Strictly fan too but going back to the original post, apparently the term 'Sports Personality' was created to avoid 'Sportsman' or 'Sportswoman' of the year, as the BBC obviously couldn't be seen to be biased towards one gender or the other. So 'personality' is simply a substitute term and they actually aren't looking for personalities as such, but rather, sports achievers.

I agree that Andy seems very boring, as he admitted himself in his acceptance speech, but he occasionally shows a great, dry sense of humour and his sporting prowess is now unquestionable, having won Wimbledon. He won me over a little with his reaction in 2012 when he cried during the post match interview having lost to Federer.